Jeffrey John : Permanent, Faithful, Stable

Jeffrey John is perhaps best known as the person who was appointed to be Bishop of Reading, a suffragan in Oxford diocese, in 2003, only to withdraw at the request of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, following protests. He wrote the booklet Permanent, Faithful, Stable in 1993 as one of a series for the liberal catholic group Affirming Catholicism. It was reprinted in an updated form in 2000 by DLT.

The booklet presents his argument in three sections, dealing in turn with the scriptural texts, moral questions, and whether the affirmation of same-sex unions would work in practice. Two issues stand out.

First, John’s treatment of the scriptural texts, notwithstanding its brevity, is very poor. The texts are ‘sparse and ambiguous’ and really can tell us nothing about the contemporary question. He contrasts this by proposing that the prohibition on divorce is ‘unambiguous’, despite the fact that there are differing accounts of Jesus’s teaching in Matthew and Mark, and that the New Testament teaching on gender roles is ‘plainly degrading’ to women, which ignores all the scholarship and discussion on these texts.

His treatment of the texts on same-sex activity are similarly broad-brush and simplistic; the texts in Leviticus are concerned with social distinction which does not concern us – and besides, we don’t look to these laws for moral guidance any more. He ignores the possible implication of Jesus’s teaching on ‘sexual immorality’, and is clear that Paul could not have imagined ‘equal, adult’ same-sex relationship when expressing his prohibitions. In Romans 1, Paul is criticising those who act against their own ‘nature’, i.e. their sexual orientation, which numerous commentators have demonstrated is a misreading.

Second, the overall thrust of John’s case is that it is the qualities and not the form of a relationship that matters – hence, as long as a relationship is ‘permanent, faithful, stable’ then it does not matter which gender the partners are. This could, of course, be offered as a perfectly good defence of polyamorous, incestuous and inter-species relationships, as is happening in some countries today. It ignores the fact that Scripture sets out healthy patterns of relationship, and not just healthy qualities.